Posted
by
samzenpuson Wednesday September 15, 2010 @07:55PM
from the same-great-taste dept.

An anonymous reader writes "With its sweetener linked to obesity, some cancers and diabetes, the Corn Refiners Association (CRA) doesn't want you to think 'fructose' when you see high fructose corn syrup in your soda, ketchup or pickles. Instead, the AP reports, the CRA submitted an application to the FDA, hoping to change the name of their top-selling product to 'corn sugar.'"

Why can't these guys do the right thing and stop making this evil stuff? Playing a shell game with the facts does not change reality.

Yes, well, you can thank a company called UOP for pioneering the process of making this stuff on an industrial scale (that was actually back in the sixties.) And you can also thank Congress for so fucking over the countries that used to grow cane sugar and sell it to us, which is why we even needed a substitute in the first place. Now, of course, those growers have switched to cocaine, cannabis, and other much more profitable crops.

In response to [successful] bad press, the HFCS crowd is pushing for the rebranding the horrid syrup as "corn sugar". A waste of time and money, I wager, in the end. Ignoring the fact that it is reasonably well established that HFCS is not good for you, it tastes like crap. Compare yellow-capped Coke (yellow=kosher) with the "regular" sold in the US...there is no comparison (inexplicably, Coke only inflicts HFCS on the US market).

PETA recently attempted the same campaign to rebrand FISH as SEA KITTENS [peta.org]...apparently they felt that people wouldn't be so willing to eat something with a cuddly persona. Completely backfired with me...I had never thought of it before, but have you tried Kitten & Chips??? A new personal favorite. Kitten, the other, other white meat.

Every time I mention it, I get a response along the lines of..."Interesting.", or "I hadn't heard that.". The reason I bring it up is because it makes me sick, literally.

For many years I had severe heartburn. The doctors prescribed everything, none of it worked. In short, I received no relief by going to a doctor. Later, after deciding to experiment myself, I altered my diet. The first thing I focused on was the ingredient that was most pervasive--corn syrup.

I now avoid it like the plague. Within a month of removing it from my diet (as much as possible, the shit is in everything), the heartburn stopped entirely.

Since then, I have brought it up with every single doctor I have seen and they all react with the same indifferent, ambiguous reply. They all seem to know nothing about it, nor do they appear interested in the results I've experienced. And every time I see that response I have to ask myself why they aren't more interested--why? I've literally spent thousands of dollars trying to find a solution to a medical problem and they refuse to discuss a possible cause, casually dismissing my findings? Why?

The only logical conclusion I can come to, considering the stuff (corn syrup) has been in HEAVY use for decades now, is that the medical "industry" knows, but cannot monetize the solution--removing corn syrup from ones diet. Telling people to stop eating it would actually cut into their business. Corn syrup makes them money in the form of direct medical symptoms that need to be treated and the inherent medical problems associated with obesity. LOTS of money.

Try it next time you're at the doctors. Just say something like "Hey, a friend told me that corn syrup causes heartburn." and see what sort of response you get. Do a Google search. Notice how the vast majority of the sites that mention it are "alternative" medicine sources and bloggers? Where is the industry standpoint on the issue?

This entire experience has been enlightening for me, in a sad way. I now see doctors as humans with the same fallible nature as the rest of us--some are just greedy fucks that have not a care in the world for my actual health.

I also noticed that when I stopped eating crap that had HFCS in it, I no longer got drowsy in the afternoon. In fact I can tell right away when I've eaten something with HFCS in it, as I inevitably get drowsy not long afterwards. Needless to say I avoid it like the plague now, and so far have lost 40lbs since I stopped eating it.

That reaction is not as trivial to the body as you make it out to be; nor is that 10% imbalance. Eating lots of sugar is bad, yes; but eating lots high-fructose sugar is worse, *measurably* worse, in several biologically-significant ways. Additionally, preliminary research suggest that some of the trace byproducts of the "fructinization" process (methylated something or others) could also have quite a disproportionately-negative effect compared to their small concentration.

Money. Our money which go to farmers (and not small, noble, independent farmers, of course) in the form of subsidies, which are spent on lobbyists and making more corn syrup, for more money and more subsidies.

Corn syrup doesn't just (maybe) cause cancer in our individual bodies, it is the by=product of a cancer of our political body.

HFC doesn't exist in nature, fructose does. Just as hydrogenated shortening (transfats) don't exist in nature but butter and lard does. And look it up your self, there is plenty out there with a simple Googling.

It's pretty amazing. Do the experiment yourself - get some "mexican coke" or Pepsi Throwback (with sugar), and some regular soda.

Over the course of 15 minutes, drink 2 cans of regular soda. No big deal, right? Later on or the next day, drink sugar-based soda, and after drinking under 12 ounces of it, you will likely feel full, and like you don't want to drink anymore, in a way thats very different from HFCS-soda. I'd be surpised if you can even finish 24oz of sugar soda in 15 min (without forcing yourself).

Coconut milk and peanut butter at least taste good, even if the former may be bad for you. Neither is in competition with real milk; peanut butter consumption and real milk consumption often go hand in hand.

Soy "milk", on the other hand, is an attempt to replace a great food with a yucky substitute in the name of nutritional "correctness". Apart from use for people who are lactose-intolerant or otherwise unable to drink the real thing, it should just DIE! DIE!! DIE!!!! And if it's not going to do us that favor, its vendors can at least stop calling it milk.

Not quite, Corn syrup starts out as 100% glucose after being converted into either 55% fructose Corn Syrup or 42% fructose Corn Syrup, the most commonly used types, the products do certainly have higher levels of fructose than unmodified Corn Syrup hence the "High Fructose" descriptor. Cane sugar on the other hand starts out as sucrose. If we start taking about carbonated beverages when the sucrose is put into solution with water and carbonic acid(from CO2) and in most cases with phosphoric acid or citric acid you have a low pH environment. Under these conditions sucrose splits into its constituents glucose and fructose. At this point, a 50% free glucose and 50% free fructose solution has shown no medically significant difference with HFCS. Better yet, something that affects both HFCS soda and cane sugar soda is that the glucose will start to convert into fructose under abnormally high, usually improper storage temperatures (90F), making this entire 5% part meaningless. So yes, one can end up with cane sugar sodas that for whatever reason have higher percentages of fructose than HFCS sodas.

Also, anyone ever look at the ratio of glucose to fructose on fruits, they are all over the map. Apples, for instance, have 90% of their sugar as fructose.

This sounds crazy, but I had this exact conversation with my daughter's doctor yesterday, and she really didn't have much to say about HFCS either (nothing beyond "sugar is bad" anyway). Though based on various research studies that I've seen recently, and the number of food companies dropping HFCS in their products, I expect this to hit the news in a huge way sometime soon.

Do a google search for things like soda craving, caffeine addiction, or even soda addiction. Caffeine is an addictive substance, and you will even have withdrawal symptoms from it if you give it up quickly. What do most sodas contain? The ones that dont are things like some root beers, and some lemon lime sodas (Sprite and 7-up). You dont see many people who drink those continuously, like you do the caffeine addicts with the Coke and the Mt. Dew.

Shellac is also used to coat many vegetables to keep them looking more fresh than they actually are, meaning, ironically, that many vegetables are not vegan.:( (I am a vegan, or, to be brutally honest, *attempt* to be a vegan. Sometimes there's really no way to know what's in the crap we consume, or no way to avoid it even if we do.)

It makes perfect sense when you think about it: Kentucky was a slave state, and nobody enjoys fried chicken more than black people do. A real authentic black man from Chicago even told me,

"Man, white dudes say some wack shit about black people, but we do love our fried chicken. That ain't no lie."

There is also a popular urban legand that Kentucky Fried Chicken had to change their name to KFC because they had found a way to grow birds with four legs and six wings to maximize yield, but the FDA would no longer allow them to be called "chickens."

I noticed that too. My wife didn't think it was possible that I could be that sensitive to HFCS. But then she saw me drink a Mt Dew, then fall asleep 20 minutes later, then be totally awake 40 minutes after that. I suspect it's the fructose and has something to do with the way some people process it. Fructose needs glucose to process, so I think that when I consume fructose, it pulls glucose from blood to process it. That seems to cause a blood sugar crash in me. The effect was so pronounced that people around me thought I was a narcoleptic (it's even in my military service record).

After I cut out HFCS, I haven't had a problem with it and feel much more awake and alert all day. I don't even need caffeine anymore.

HCFS is, by design, essentially liquid table sugar. 50% of it is fructose. Just like table sugar.

Umm.... NO!

It's not. "Table Sugar" is sucrose. HFCS is a mix of fructose and glucose.

Yes, sucrose is a disaccharide made up of glucose and fructose. No, that doesn't make them the same. You understand the difference between a mixture and a compound, don't you? And that these compounds can have radically different properties to the elements they're made up from?

I mean, that was something we learned in chemistry class at the age of about 10.

More likely - 'synthetic honey' -- which wouldn't be all that inaccurate for the most common form of HFCS - HFCS-55. I doubt the stuff is good for you but the cancer and diabetes stuff is probably -- like most all pop-culture medical stuff and entirely too much "serious" medical advice -- pretty much unmitigated bullshit. Obesity? Well, yeah a six pack a day of drinks loaded with honey or its equivalent mix of fructose and dextrose(glucose) will probably put some pounds on the addicts.

The problem at this point is that only HFCS is blamed, when in fact, any consumption of any object that raises your blood sugar levels is going to lead to chronic disease. The problem, of course, is that many of these things have been touted as "healthy" for the past 40 years.

The problem is, HFCS-55 fails to trigger the satiety reflex properly. And the vast majority of items it's put into are items that already aren't so great for you.

Soda/pop is particularly bad because it combines multiple known agents: caffeine (diuretic), carbonic acid (makes the tissues of mouth and throat feel dry), sodium chloride (ever drink salt water? Notice how it doesn't help you quench thirst?), and HFCS-55 rather than actual sugar to bypass satiety reflex. "Diet" sodas are even worse; nutrasweet dries out the mouth tissues in an action very similar to the carbonic acid, for a "double whammy."

The end result being that you can guzzle a 64-ounce Big Gulp down, feel yourself needing to pee, and at the same time still feel thirsty right after you finish the damn thing. Or in other words: go ahead. Drink your weight in nectar, lardo.

Actually the diabetes is for-real and not "pop-culture" medicine. Go reading up on the research. It causes major insulin spikes (because it goes into the bloodstream and doesn't respond to insulin (glucose does that)- and it is processed only by your liver.

Drinking a corn-syrup sweetened soda is very much like drinking a beer without the drunk- with the same impact on your system.

HCFS is NOT the same as sucrose, contrary to anything the industry has said on the subject. It's two monosaccarides instead of a disaccaride just for starters- it metabolizes completely differently with differing metabolic effects on you.

The ratio of Fructose to Glucose generated by our digestive system while digesting Sucrose is almost identical to the contents of HFCS.

Table sugar is not a syrup; syrup is created through hydrolysis. Hydrolysis of cane sugar produces cane syrup. Eating any kind of syrup is different from eating granulated sugar. When cane sugar is used in a drink it's hydrolyzed into syrup, or the product wouldn't be commercially viable - the sugar would crystalize in the bottle while on the shelf and add a granular texture to the drink. It's only the lemonade or whatever you whip up at home for instant consumption that actually contains sucrose. While some hydrolysis occurs in the gut after eating granular sugar, it's a limited process. The presence of syrups in the blood produces an insulin response, but fat cells are unable to store it. So they absorb all other glucose from the bloodstream, lowering blood sugar. It's not until the liver has metabolised the syrup that fat cells can absorb it and insulin levels return to normal. As a result the insulin response is longer and the non-syrup blood sugar drops lower than if you ate plain sugar. Apart from making you fatter this also has the effect of reducing insulin sensitivity and inducing fatigue. Over time you get fat, lazy, and diabetic.

The only reason there is cheap high fructose corn syrup is because the massive corn subsides make the process cheap and profitable. If there were none, sweetener would be pure sugar from beats or cane. Falsely cheap corn because of subsidies causes uses for it that would normally not be economical nor profitable.

The immune system is only partially responsible for weeding out those nasty malfunctioning cells. Many other systems kick in. Mainly in the cell itself, programmed cell death - apoptosis - is triggered from a multitude malfunctioning cell states, as well as from various well functioning states internal and external to the cell itself.
Malfunctioning cells generally have to be seriously malfunctioning, and express a "non-self" surface biochemistry before the immune system kicks in and starts attacking it.

The human body is not geared to consume it and results in stress and even damage to internal organs.

That's about all I think I know. I have heard nothing about making cancer cells multiply. When you say this, do you mean to say that it causes cancer cells to increase their rate of growth over control groups without HFCS present? Rather than implying, I would rather see such statements made clearly. Also, while I am not doubting, do you have any references to cite?

I think what we are seeing is a similar sort of public rejection that was witnessed with "Nutrasweet." When people learned the harm it could do, they started avoiding anything with Nutrasweet on the label. So what was the industry's response? They took it off the label... not out of the products though. It's still in there. Look for "aspartame" in the ingredients.

And it's not like there isn't a better alternative. There is in sweetleaf. It's just that the various industries like making money the way they are -- especially the corn farmers.

People do call fructose "fruit sugar", but the FDA does not allow HFCS to be called "fructose", since (as you point out) it isn't. Nor can it be labeled "sugar", which it is, due to the chemical processes involved (much like how you have to specify that fat is hydrogenated, even though it's still just fat).

HFCS use in foods has been declining, yet obesity continues to rise...

Citation needed, and here it is: HFCS use in food has declined about about 20% per capita, since the high point in 2002 (source, table 50) [usda.gov]. In fact, the use of caloric sweeteners has fallen by 15%, while obesity has increased by 15% in the same time period (source) [ama-assn.org].

Of course, HFCS consumption still correlates positively with obesity on the individual level – just not directly. More HFCS generally implies more junk food.

Oh, if only logic worked... The obsession with HFCS vs. fructose vs. cane sugar vs. honey is the same old fantasy of being able to eat all the crap you want as long as it's the right kind of crap.

Obesity as a biological problem was solved ages ago: consume less energy and/or expend more. Science will eventually solve the psychological problem that you can't eat that donut even though you really want to, but until then, wishing really hard won't make it come true. And trying does not help.

The Corn Refiners Association calls itself a "trade group". Basically it is a propaganda and lobbying machine. Increasingly and accurately people are realizing that corn syrup, specifically high fructose corn syrup, isn't exactly the healthiest thing you can feed yourself and your children. It's in damn near everything that, Americans at least, eat today. It's cheap to produce and appealing to the taste buds. The CRA seems to think that if they change the name of the product they represent, we'll all forget that it's making us fat.

You still need the healthcare. If you don't die of one thing, you'll die of another.

You might be much better able to PAY for the healthcare - obesity and its accompanying diseases occur in relatively young people. Here in the UK where our healthcare is universal, we actually have people arguing that we should be more widely offering stomach stapling surgery, especially for younger recipients, because the benefits outweigh the costs - what the state pays in surgical costs will be more than made up for by the patient getting thinner, getting back to work, and paying their taxes again.

I was recently watching a documentary on wartime rationing - as a nation we had never been fed better. Our kids were taller and stronger than they ever had been, at a time of adversity and privation, because we were actually educated on what was good to eat - not so we could get thinner, but so we could be strong enough to carry on even though our supplies were limited. We grew vegetables. We ATE the vegetables.

Only the higher percentage HFCS is sweeter... so either they use HFCS-90 or it has just as many calories.

The exact type of HFCS is rarely mentioned and wikipedia's justification for saying HFCS-90 is rarely used is a single article by an industry shill. Are there any independent tests of glucose/fructose ratios in soft drinks?

I think there's a niche in the market for a soft drink that's tasty and refreshing but not full of sugar. I can't find one. The closest you can get is fruit juice, and even that's usually concentrated or has added sugar.

The big soft drink companies (Coca Cola etc) are hard at work marketing "flavoured water" in the UK, e.g. this [vitaminwater.co.uk] and this [staydrenched.co.uk]. They're trying to turn a product that's been popular in the UK for decades (super-concentrated fruit squash [wikipedia.org] with sugar or sweetener, depending on your preference, which you dilute with water) into something you buy pre-diluted, and pretending it's healthy. I think it would be equivalent to trying to sell premixed Kool Aid.

My usual sweet soft drink at home/work is an "adult" (i.e. expensive and in a glass rather than plastic bottle...) squash, but most of the time I drink water.I sometimes drink fruit juice, which is always 100% fruit juice (otherwise they have to call it "fruit drink" or something).

For a while here, Coca Cola sold bottled water that they got from the city water supply at the factory in North London, until they withdrew the "product" after bad press.

If fructose is so much worse than sucrose, then why is it frequently used as an alternative sweetener to sucrose for diabetics? (See, for example, manufacturers such as Fifty 50)

Fructose causes blood glucose levels to rise more slowly than glucose (duh...) or sucrose. As a result, it is a better sweetener for diabetics. Sucrose needs to be split into its components (glucose and sucrose) followed by chemical reactions that convert fructose to glucose. Fructose needs to be converted in its entirety.

However HFCS is pretty bad news, due to that 45% glucose which can be immediately absorbed into the bloodstream (even through the cheeks!) without any processing by the body, it's actually worse than sucrose for diabetics. (It took me a while to get used to "High fructose corn syrup != fructose".)

Soy "milk", on the other hand, is an attempt to replace a great food with a yucky substitute in the name of nutritional "correctness".

I occasionally drink soy milk. It tastes fairly close to milk. If you've tasted different types of milk, you would certainly give soy milk a pass as actually being milk. The taste does differ from brand to brand. After all, there is more in it that just soy juice. In combination with other cereal products, most people can't taste the difference; especially if you use sugary cereal.

As for the "great food" comment. Actually, milk is a poor choice unless you're an infant. And even for infants, cow milk is a poor substitute. Humans should consume human milk and cows should consume cow milk. And technically, goat's milk is actually better for you than cows milk. Around the world, goats and sheep provide the majority of the world's milk supply consumed by humans. And this entirely ignores the fact that most consumer milks have many substances which are out right bad for humans; including antibiotics and hormones. Both of which has been shown to cause endless problems for lower forms of life. Likewise, many studies have shown some correlation between consumption of these substances and health problems in humans, not to mention playing a role in antibiotic immunity is various pathogens.

And even within milk, the taste can vary dramatically; including human milk. As with most mammals, a milk's flavor is frequently characterized by both the species of mammal and the diet consumed by the milk producing mammal.

So basically your complaint boils down to: I don't like anything other than unhealthy cow's milk because alternatives taste different and are typically far more healthy.

As a side note, you can frequently get soy milk in a variety of flavors. So if you don't like the taste of straight soy milk, try a flavored variety which is far less likely to confuse your milk-biased buds. Many people enjoy vanilla. But if soy is flat out not your thing, there are a variety of alternate "milk" products which are derived from a multitude of different nuts, most of which are more healthy than cows milk when it comes to human consumption.

Sadly enough, cane sugar Coke is still offered in many areas of the world outside of the United States (and not ju.It seems that the corn lobby and our reluctance to import cane sugar from Cuba may have something to do with this.When we're stuck with third-rate versions of products like this, it makes me question how "great" America is nowadays.